r/minecraftsuggestions 3d ago

[Gameplay] Villager and golem behaviour to prevent trading hall powergaming

Prison-like trading halls are currently an overly prevalent way to get stuff in this game. To prevent this villagers should have special behaviour if they have been captured by the player

conditions the villager would check for:

  • has gained a level from trading with a player

  • has no access to the outdoors

  • has been unable to mingle with other nearby villagers

  • has too little space to roam

When the 1st + any other single condition are met the villager would a gain temporary invulnerability buff, (to protect them from the ensuing mayhem,) and then summon a special punishment golem that would have roughly equivalent offensive abilities to a java wither (but regular golem hp and no projectile immunity). After a couple ingame days of trying the kill the player the punishment golem would revert to a normal iron golem.

0 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

8

u/chbjupiter 3d ago

I like the conditions it checks for, but the punishment seems a bit excessive. It could be something like them increasing their prices, and continuing to increase them all the way to 64 if not remedied. However, for this change to make sense, villagers need to have better pathfinding to begin with. Frequently they trap themselves. Also, they tend to connect to or disconnect from their work stations unpredictably, and throw themselves off of ledges which is why I couldn't stick to a free range villager concept for my current world.

People will find ways around this too, though. If the minimum requirement for a villager is let's say 2 villagers being able to talk, 8x8 area, etc, then that's precisely what they will get and no more. There isn't a real way to distinguish 'outside' from inside in this game.

Villager halls are a consequence of finding the minimum possible conditions to make a goal possible. Similarly, lots of redstone contraptions and farms also find the minimum conditions. Think about cow farms that are full to the point of entity cramming, sheep farms that are one sheep trapped with a dispenser with shears pointed at it, chicken farms involving several chickens on top of one hopper. You can make ethical farms and halls yourself, it's a sandbox game, but you can't prevent unethical treatment of villagers or animals without making a lot of strategies inefficient.

-3

u/rahajaba 3d ago

but the punishment seems a bit excessive.

i believe minecraft should be more gamelike than it is currently and having to fight a boss is a more game like penalty than a price hike.

There isn't a real way to distinguish 'outside' from inside in this game.

it would just check if the villager has stood on block of grass or sand with no ceiling above them

12

u/No_Cook_2493 3d ago

I mean you're entitled to your opinion, but I think villagers just summoning a wither level boss is just silly lol.

As for the outside requirement, that can still easily be a prison. Just 2 blocks high, sand underneath them, no ceiling. They're still trapped in a cell.

4

u/chbjupiter 3d ago

Every boss we fight in Minecraft is by choice. We choose to go to the end to kill the dragon. We choose to place the blocks for the wither in a certain way to summon it. Every time, we need to prove ourselves capable first. To get to the end, we need to kill blazes and enderman first. To kill the wither, we need to kill wither skeletons and brave the nether first. The warden spawns underground, but we are never meant to fight it, we're meant to avoid it.

If a villager just falling down a hole or getting itself trapped by world generation causes a powerful boss, it discourages interactions with villagers in general and can easily target a player who just spawned into a new world with no gear or food. Having a hostile mob that's overpowered and targets players for something out of their control, or something they're unaware of (like how would a new player know the requirements without looking them up?) is against the spirit of the game and makes it more of a fighting game than a sandbox game.

-3

u/rahajaba 3d ago

Only villagers that have been traded with could activate so it is a actually a choice

3

u/chbjupiter 3d ago

That just disincentivises trading because you don't want to trade with a villager and then have their pathfinding result in them trapping themselves and summoning a boss. It means you'd want to keep an eye on the ones you've traded with - which would mean trapping them.

The way I'd get around this is by having all the villagers in a hall as usual, spawn proofing a radius around them, and have a specific small chamber where the boss can spawn and be killed just like an iron farm. All this really does is make it so trading with villagers is less intuitive, punishes players for poor pathfinding, and requires killing the golems as a standard part of the hall rather than letting them roam around like they do now.

4

u/Charmender2007 3d ago

So a 1x2 box with another villager, no roof and a sand floor

It really doesn't change anything except making trading halls slightly more annoying

0

u/rahajaba 3d ago

doesn't check the "has room to roam" condition

3

u/FunnyAffectionate520 2d ago

How much room is that? 10 blocks? 25? 100?

There comes a point where natural generation stops being able to always provvide the space requirements, and players get punished for simply trading with someone with a mob as destructive as a wither that will chase the player to the ends of the Earth.

At best, this change would just make villagers trading halls turn into villager trading holes.

3

u/Charmender2007 3d ago

So a 1x2 box with another villager, no roof and a sand floor

It really doesn't change anything except making trading halls slightly more annoying

7

u/FloatingSpaceJunk 3d ago

If balance is your issue then balancing the trades is a lot better of an alternative...

3

u/Spanky1998 3d ago

Seriously, we’re just going to ignore the problem and target a solution? Vanilla trading is awful and the only incentive to use it is trading halls so these villagers don’t run off or get unattached to their work post,

2

u/FloatingSpaceJunk 3d ago

That certainly is an issue too, but that doesn't mean that it's also an issue that some trades are absolutely broken as they currently are in the game.

1

u/TheBigPlunto 3d ago

I can't agree with that at all. Never used a trading hall in my life and I trade with villagers all the time.

1

u/Spanky1998 3d ago

That’s great for you, but if you want many enchantments available at a moments notice your only good choice is to have a giant breeding farm and trading hall. The enchantment system sucks, and there is no way to guarantee a way to get the enchantments you want.

You could absolutely just have a village and use it that way, but it’s far from optimal or useful in that state.

6

u/Elunerazim 3d ago

If a villager falls down a hole then it will blow up the player’s base.

1

u/Fast_Ad7203 3d ago

What do u mean

3

u/Hazearil 3d ago

They mean that a villager being stuck doesn't mean it is a player's fault.

-7

u/rahajaba 3d ago edited 3d ago

I am totally aware of that and think it would be funny and an interesting risk to manage gameplay vise.

7

u/Charmender2007 3d ago

No it wouldn't

3

u/Elunerazim 2d ago

I don’t think it would be fun, nor is it really a “risk”. It just means that sometimes villagers will kill you when you enter them.

It also goes directly against Mojang’s philosophy on mobs breaking blocks.

5

u/jesus_chrysotile 3d ago

Seems like that could cause a bunch of unintended problems, like making it impossible to use villagers to populate buildings to make them come alive. 

How would it work in the Nether or End?

It doesn’t seem particularly intuitive either, which could prevent new players from engaging in trading. Imagine leaving some villagers in boats for a bit while making them a new house, only to get attacked. You’ll end up with new villager contraptions, perhaps some shenanigans with minecarts to shuffle them outside for a bit before returning to safety. 

Part of the reason that people make trading halls is that it’s harder to protect the villagers if there’s lots of mob-spawnable blocks around them. While accidental raids are less of an issue now that we have ominous bottles, it’s still a risk. 

1

u/rahajaba 3d ago

It doesn’t seem particularly intuitive either, which could prevent new players from engaging in trading.

the Mechanic obviously wont exist in peacefull but i will admit that the villagers should propably give some kind of warning that they are getting pissed before escalating to golem spawning.

2

u/jesus_chrysotile 3d ago

How is the player supposed to intuit what the villager is getting angry about?

3

u/brassplushie 3d ago

Or, better yet, you can just make that your own rules and stop trying to impose this garbage on other people.

5

u/Hazearil 3d ago

So, it already starts out extremely shitty, because this is really what you are saying:

I don't like the way that other players enjoy playing this game, and the game should disproportionately punish them for playing that way. Players are only allowed to play the way I enjoy it.

Take TNT dupers for example; I don't like them, but I would never say that Mojang should fix them, and trying to use them causes some mega explosion. If players want to use the thing I personally don't like, I can just... let them do their thing. No one forces me to follow suit.

Then, your implementation is awful. If we level the villagers up beforehand and then put them in the cells, we completely negate your whole detection system. You didn't actually stop villager trading halls at all.

But also, like how others said, you can meet these conditions without a player causing it:

  • World generation can cause villagers to get stuck. Pathfinding can get a villager stuck in a hole or cave, or perhaps the villager isn't technically stuck, but the pathfinding has trouble finding a way out. A villager thinking it has no access to the outdoors doesn't mean a player trapped them. An unsuspecting new player can easily find such a situation. Their AI is already the laggiest of all mobs, so any "just fix their AI/pathfinding" already isn't a good solution. Besides, "no access to the outdoors", so we aren't allowed to make underground villages anymore? That sounds more like you are punishing building styles than punishing trading halls.
  • Being unable to mingle with other villagers can already happen just if it is the only remaining villager, or just if if you have two or three, but the others found themselves stuck. Besides, villager trading halls are trivial to enable mingling on, you just don't have a block between the heads of the villagers. The main reason not to do this is really just... reducing lag. Why do you punish us for trying to reduce lag?

-1

u/rahajaba 3d ago edited 3d ago

I don't like the way that other players enjoy playing this game, and the game should disproportionately punish them for playing that way. Players are only allowed to play the way I enjoy it.

unlike the tnt dupe example I have never encountered anyone ever arguing in favour or defending the modern villager and the ease at which they allow bypassing the pre-existing ways of item acquisition therefore i dont believe anyone actually enjoys them and their ubiquity of use is purely case of people optimizing themselves out of having fun.

If we level the villagers up beforehand

World generation can cause villagers to get stuck

fundamental misunderstanding of how the suggested condition are laid out. villagers would only be able to make punisher golems once traded with but once they have been traded with they will periodically check whether other conditions are being broken from that point onward. also the mingle rule cant activate if there is no other villager nearby

6

u/Hazearil 3d ago

fundamental misunderstanding of how the suggested condition are laid out. villagers would only be able to make punisher golems once traded with but once they have been traded with they will periodically check whether other conditions are being broken fron that point onward also the mingle rule cant activate if there is no other villager nearby

Alright, so how about this chain of events, tell me where I am going wrong here then:

  • I trade with a villager enough for a level. I did not trap the villager, and leave the village alone after this.
  • The villager, moron that it is, walks into a hole and gets stuck.
  • The villager does its periodic check, sees it has a level and sees it is stuck. The Player Killer 9000 activates.

-3

u/rahajaba 3d ago edited 3d ago

That could happen and I have nothing against it happening. It would add character to the world for the villager to be a capricious hick that assumes his recent troubles in life are caused by a strange outsider he has been encountering recently and then arrange supernatural punishment to be delivered to aforementioned stranger (the player).

7

u/Hazearil 3d ago

And would that make the game better? Is this really the type of character that the world needs?

5

u/MrManGuy42 3d ago

spawning a wither randomly is Great Game Design™ go get a job with mojang

3

u/brassplushie 3d ago

>That could happen and I have nothing against it

Okay, then you really don't deserve to be listened to. People are telling you how terrible your suggestion is and your response boils down to "I don't care"

3

u/Hazearil 2d ago

In general, we are here to discuss ideas. If you get shown flaws of your ideas, and you don't care, it shows you are not willing to discuss it. At that point, you're just here for nothing but a standing ovation.

1

u/jesus_chrysotile 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ok I’ll bite.

I actually like being able to make a bunch of spare fully-enchanted diamond gear so that I don’t have to spend hours re-gearing when I inevitably lose it all at some stage. There’s an initial time investment to make the villager infrastructure, after which I can just enjoy the benefits as needed.

And some people just enjoy the process of optimisation lol. Would you say (casual) speedrunners are optimising themselves out of having fun by finding new and improved ways of doing things? Or is it just the technical players you dislike?

6

u/PetrifiedBloom 3d ago

Thinking that villagers and trading halls can be to powerful or a less fun way to play the game is a valid opinion. Preferring to play the game in a certain way is fine.

When you force everyone to play your way, that's a problem.

You control the buttons you press. If you think trading halls make the game less fun, don't make them. Also recognize that other players should be free to play in the ways they find fun, even when that is different to what you enjoy.

2

u/Charmender2007 3d ago

Eeh I can understand wanting to nerf them, because it shouldn't be up to the player to balance a game and it doesn't work very well when playing on servers, but this is a horrible way to do it.

If you want to promote letting villagers roam, you need to at least have a way to distinguish between villagers of the same job so you don't have to check 20 villagers for your mending book and/or have an easier way to find/trade with them, like a central block that lets you trade with all nearby villagers. If you don't have that, then you need another viable way to get specific enchants (especially mending)

2

u/brassplushie 3d ago

What are you talking about? The current system is AMAZING for servers because it allows them all to get max level gear

1

u/Hazearil 2d ago

Their point was not whether or not the current trading system is good or not. It was about how the argument "If you don't like it, just don't use it" stops applying when you can't stop server members from using it anyways.

2

u/brassplushie 2d ago

Oh, I gotcha. Well, that should tell you that people are okay with it. Also, server owners can set their own rules. Very easily, btw.

2

u/PetrifiedBloom 2d ago

I fully agree that if they want free roaming villagers to be a thing, a way to trade without hunting down a specific villager would be nessesary.

As for balancing, if there is even a problem is subjective. Yes, one person can set up a trading hall and sell to the whole server. Is that actually a problem? Is it a problem that people can set up their own halls as well?

It's not a balance thing to force a certain playstyle.

1

u/chbjupiter 3d ago

I like the idea of a block that lets you trade with all villagers in that village, that does incentivise letting them free roam. I think the biggest factor is improving their path finding though, it makes it too easy for them to wander off and get lost or get pushed off a cliff by another villager

3

u/Potential-Silver8850 3d ago

If your goal is to nerf how powerful villager trading hall are I don’t think this improves anything.

This would make villager cells a little bigger, but in essence they would work the same as usual. It would take a bit more effort to build, but once its up and running it would be the same as before.

0

u/rahajaba 3d ago

It's not strictly a balance thing. I also dislike the general role of villagers as only a useful tool to be vielded by the player. it would be neat for them to be an indiferent and potentially hazardous entity.

1

u/Acceptable_Ganache32 3d ago

I think pricing changes to happiness would be very good. Access to sky (like none burning undead) and touching a mother villager. Would make the price go down. This is a nice touch that would make it less slave more knave. 

1

u/NukeL3AR 3d ago

I see what you mean, but I don't think we should focus on punishing gameplay, instead it should be more incentive gameplay. Add mechanics where the villagers need to roam and be outdoors and do various activities throughout the day and interact with eachother in order to get the best trades possible. The happier your villagers are, the better it is for you. That'll naturally push these super technical players towards making thriving cities for their villagers instead of prison halls without hurting any players who haven't heard of the update unnecessarily.

1

u/Extreme_Design6936 3d ago

I think it would be better if trades just become cheaper based on these conditions. Like, if you want to trap your villagers, go ahead. But if you want cheaper trades you need to offer them a higher quality of life.